


The Bard's Song

by ravenditefairylights



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Daeron and Maglor are both being dramatic, First Meetings, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Modern Era, Seventh Age, and sarcastic little shits, meetings in the beach, technically it's second but shhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 02:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15451419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenditefairylights/pseuds/ravenditefairylights
Summary: Never trust a survivor, until you learned what they did to survive; that’s what my father used to say.Me? I was a coward. I drowned in my lovesick self-pity for years, avoiding all the battles; the war that raged everywhere around me. I survived the war because I was a coward; because I never really participated in it.He? He was a soldier. Some say monster- I used to as well. He was not only in the middle of every single battle, but on the first line of attack, each and every time. Some of -most of, really- the battles were his fault; his family’s fault. Everybody knew he had killed more people than I ever got to meet....or in which Daeron meets Maglor again, and things are different than they used to.





	The Bard's Song

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first First Person POV and I blame it entirely one [kanafiinwe,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanafiinwe/pseuds/kanafiinwe) who also beta-read the whole thing; thanks fam.

Never trust a survivor, until you learned what they did to survive; that’s what my father used to say.

Me? I was a coward. I drowned in my lovesick self-pity for years, avoiding all the battles; the war that raged everywhere around me. I survived the war because I was a coward; because I never really participated in it.

He? He was a soldier. Some say monster- I used to as well. He was not only in the middle of every single battle, but on the first line of attack, each and every time. Some of -most of, really- the battles were his fault; his family’s fault. Everybody knew he had killed more people than I ever got to meet.

He killed my parents, too. I don’t what it says about me that I only learned they died because he told me himself. I had assumed they did, but it wasn’t like someone had bothered to tell me. I had so many years to set foot miles close to a person that I was considered a ghost.

He’s one of these people you’re supposed to run away from; there’s something about him that screams “DANGER! STAY AWAY!”. I’m fairly sure he worked hard to give people that impression about him; and it was quite successful if the stories are to be believed.

Maybe it’s the way he holds himself; shoulders slumped but standing towering over everyone even when his eyes are glued to the floor. Maybe it’s the way the ocean in his irises seems drained and empty, but snaps alert over everything; the way his eyes seem to be looking straight into your soul. Maybe it’s the way he smirks, like he enjoys knowing he can kill you before you have a chance to blink; but never smiles. Maybe it’s his reputation that precedes him, written in the blood of the countless corpses he’s left in his wake.

Whatever it is, it’s clear he’s a person you run  _ away _ and not towards. I was never one to heed warnings anyway.

Never trust a survivor until you know what they did to survive. I know what he did; and besides, we are the only survivors now. The difference is that I did nothing, and he did everything.

_ I was somewhat disappointed that he didn’t kill me as soon as I walked in that beach. _

I had spent so many years hating him -hating his entire family- that when I came face to face with him for the second time in my life, I couldn’t find it in me to even slap him; much less be hostile. Most of me was so detached from everything that happened back in the First Age; I was sick of feeling sorry for myself, for Luthien, for the war, for everything.

People called me a ghost for years, but he was the one who actually  _ looked _ like one. He was sitting in the shore, looking nothing short of an unfortunate sailor who had just been washed ashore by the sea who destroyed his ship in a thunderstorm; holding to a piece of wood from it as if it was a lifeline. Only he was holding to a harp rather than a piece of wood, and he looked like he had a couple of centuries to wash himself; Eru, his hair looked almost white from the salt stuck in them. My initial thought at their sight was that there was no saving them, he had to be shaved. Of course, I never told him that.

His clothes were ripped; they used to be royal noldorin garments of the finest silk, fancy enough to compete with the High King, as was fitting for a prince like he was. They had so many holes in that it was fortunate there were so many layers, otherwise he would have been naked. The salt of the sea had ruined their texture, and the sun had turned the vivid shades of purple into a faded variety of pink. He wore no circlet of gold, held no sword in his hands and had no blood on them, no fire in his eyes like the pictures always showed him; like history always described him.

_ He didn’t look like the monster he was supposed to be.  _

At this point, it would be great and fitting to describe what defines a monster, which is an excellent question that, I, unfortunately, do not have a proper answer to. What defines a monster? Is it what they did -how it looks-, or just how you feel about it? Are you a monster if you regret what you did? If you had once been someone else once, someone worthy of love?

Who knows. Honestly, who even  _ cares?  _ It’s been six ages, no one should care, that’s who.

Maglor Fëanorion looks like complete and utter shit;  _ and yet he’s somehow still attractive, screw him. _ No one is supposed to be able to pull off looking like a homeless man who had been knocked around by a thunderstorm.

He takes a long look at me when he notices I’m standing next to him, and none of us speaks.

Rivals; that’s what all the legends said we are. Two elves who both own the title of the finest elven minstrel, fighting to prove which one of us deserves it more. We’re both tired of fighting.

Maglor breaks the silence first, with a huff, and turns around to continue what he did without gracing me more attention. You know how I said that I couldn’t be hostile anymore? It was true about the past, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to punch his ( _ unfairly attractive _ ) face.

“That’s it?” I demand. “We’re the last elves away from Valinor at this point, and all you can do is  _ huff at me?” _

Maglor doesn’t even blink. “All of my illusions go away eventually,” he says. “I just have to ignore them long enough.”

“I’m not an illusion,” I protest, not sure where this was coming from.

“They all are,” Maglor responds, not sparing me even a glance. “Although I admit I’m somewhat surprised it’s  _ you _ this time.” Now he does look at me, and while he pins me down with a stare that looks straight into my soul, I can see for the first time how his eyes really look like.

I had seen them before in Mered Ardenath but I didn’t paid them any attention. I had forgotten that his eyes were blue. But they are, and my first thought is how I could forget that the ocean looked better in his eyes than it did in front of me.

Which, frankly, I shouldn’t be thinking  _ at all. _

“I’m not an illusion,” I repeat, because I need to say it; I need to convince him as much as myself. If he doesn’t think I’m real, then there would be no one left to remember me; to care if I exist or not. If no one cares about me, I wouldn’t exist at all, and there’s something so terrifying in that split-moment thought that jerks me back to the present like lightning. “I’m  _ real _ .”

Maglor takes another long look at me, and then stands up. He’s walking towards me, and every instinct I have is screaming at me to run because he’ll kill me, but the most conscious part of me doesn’t really care.

The only thing he does is hold my face in both of his hands, and the gesture is so affectionate and there’s so much  _ need _ radiating from it, that I’m stunned into place for a moment. Maglor looks stunned as well, whether with his own decision or something else, I do not know. I suppose he’s definitely not questioning his sanity; he’s sitting in the shore singing, ugly and thinner than should be possible, he most probably accepted that he was not exactly sane some while ago.

“You’re real,” he says, and it sounds as if he can barely believe it himself. “You’re real,” he repeats with more determination, and there’s a sudden surge of relief in my heart- barely, but it’s there. Can you, yourself, start doubting whether you are real or not? I suppose six ages of wandering all by myself in a world that progresses so entirely different than mine ever could- ever  _ would _ \- will do that to you. I never thought of myself as an illusion until he mentioned it, and then suddenly it was a possibility.

I guess that I am not entirely sane either.

“That’s what I said,” I say instead, and my voice doesn’t quaver the way I expected it would. Hesitantly, Maglor’s hands start roaming my face, the way someone might do to make sure they’re still whole; and that’s when I realize that he’s trying to make sure I won’t turn into smoke under his palms. That’s when I realize that’s what has been happening to him for so long.

_ The warming of sympathy in my heart should not be there. _

As suddenly as he grabbed my face, he lets go of it and steps back. He looks down at the sand in a way that makes me want to put my arms around him and offer some sort comfort- which, of course, I resist doing. He looks like a puppy, kicked and lost and homeless.  _ He needs someone to take of him; he obviously cannot do it himself. _

I’ve always liked puppies.  _ I’ve always been good of taking care of people. _

The sky is taking up the colours of the sunset; painted in shades of red to yellow and pink that differ so much from the clear blue of the day and the almost black of the night that it might as well have been another planet. And along with the night that is approaching comes the chill, and the beach will get unbearably cold once it does; places close to water tend to do that in the autumn.

I unconsciously look around a few times without finding anything, before I realize that I was looking for wood, and there is none around. “Care to help me light a fire?” I ask, but of all the reactions, I don’t expect him to whip his head to look at me as if I had said ‘care to help me kill me a bunch of people’ instead; which, considering his history, he shouldn’t look so shocked over.

“We are absolutely, certainly, unreservedly and without a doubt,  _ not _ lighting a fire,” Maglor says, “Not now, not ever,” he shakes his head as if to emphasize his point. I open my mouth to argue (my argument was perfectly reasonable) but he does not let me speak. “No.”

My hand itches to slap some sense into him, but I resist; it would do no good, slapping a killer, and _definitely_ _not_ a feanorian.

“It will get cold,” I try to reason, already knowing it will be to no avail. Maglor is as immovable as a rock if he wants to- I had heard his kind was stubborn but now I see it; jaw set hard and eyes alight with the only fire I have seen in them so far, a steely, fiery determination he probably does not know he wears. A fiery determination I am certain he has no idea suits him;  _ has no idea how good looks on him. _

“The cold is nothing I cannot handle,” he says, and I roll my eyes; mostly to resist creating a flow of red liquid under his nose. 

“Well, perhaps you are immune, but I, unlike your stone cold personality, am a quite warm person and the cold affects me. Therefore, I am lighting a fire,” I say and turn around so that I don’t have to hear his protests. I like to have the last word in an argument, sue me. Or well, don’t, because I don’t have any money. You know what I mean.

I only half (alright, maybe ¾) expect him to run after me and physically tackle me to prevent me, but he doesn’t, and it doesn’t take me long to find a few piece of wood lying around; not enough for anything much, but enough to start a fire.

I go back to do exactly that, and Maglor merely watches me with something akin to mild boredom in his face as I struggle to get this right. My hand twitches again, and suddenly the idea of harming him doesn’t seem half as difficult as it did before.

“Will you help me, or will you keep staring at me like an idiot?” I snap, but I don’t turn to look at him because I know the expression in his face might be enough to irritate me enough to change it permanently.

“I believe I will keep staring- the spectacle is entertaining enough.” oh, I am so definitely going to punch him. I can almost imagine it; my fist colliding with Maglor’s perfect nose and hearing a satisfying crack- and then the fire is finally lit and all my attention is diverted almost immediately.

“HA!” I exclaim triumphically, even though my pride has suffered a bruising; a bruising that judging from Maglor’s attitude, the noldo would never let me live down.

“How exciting,” Maglor comments dryly. I sigh; this is my fault- didn’t I decide to stay?

“Yes,” I agree, “it’s thrilling.”

“When are you leaving?” Maglor asks after a moment of silence.

“I’m not leaving.” I reply simply, and that is what finally makes him look over at me, surprise hiding in his eyes. He’s trying to mask it, but the clear blue in them darkens ever so slightly, and it’s obvious. “You evidently need someone to yell at you to take a bath, and well, we  _ are _ the last elves in Middle-earth, or whatever it is that it’s called these days.”

Maglor looks genuinely shocked for a moment; as long as it takes to school his face back into a careful blank mask. “I don’t deserve that.”

“Oh yes, forgive me, I had forgotten that the eternal punishment of criminals was to stay with greasy hair forever,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my every word because, really, I can’t help it. All of his crimes happened so long ago, it might as well have been a different lifetime. Perhaps it was.

Maglor smiles a little; just the slightest pull of the corners of his lips upwards-  _ I would like to see him smile for real.  _

In the end, we are the only two survivors of an Age that was glorious and bloody and sorrowful, of a world that was filled with magic and nobility and broken promises.

Me? I was a coward.

He? He was a monster.

But, in the end, what we did and who we were doesn’t not define we are now. We live in an age of technology and hope and dreams that hang above us like neon signs, and suddenly, miraculously, forgiveness does not seem so far.

In the darkening colours of the sunset that abandons us slowly, the shadows that the firelight casts around Maglor’s face- sharpening it- and the glimmer of the sea and the wet sand around us, a new life seems like a possibility.

And I would like to try it.

 

_ I’m so tired of mourning. Let me live, let me thrive. Perhaps now I don’t deserve it, but I can try; maybe in the future I will. _

 

_ Let me live, let me thrive; the routes of my sorrow belong in the past. _

 

_ This is a new age now, and I will make better choices. We both will. _


End file.
